Washington Avenue

Built 1956 – 57 and occupied for many years by William Oliver, an educator in Charlotte’s public schools, and Blanche Rann Oliver, a music teacher. In 1968 William Oliver won appointment to Charlotte’s Park and Recreation Commission — the first successful appointment to any city board by Fred Alexander, Charlotte’s first black City Councilman in the 20th century.

Built about 1950 – 51 for Lovett A. Warner, who worked in the printing office of the A.M.E. Zion religious denomination, and wife Annie C. Warner, teacher at the Myers Street School in Charlotte’s Brooklyn neighborhood.

Constructed about 2007, first occupants Charles Collins and David D. Singleton. Dozens of houses exactly like this were built by an investor on vacant lots in many parts of Charlotte during the mid-2000s “housing bubble” prior to the Recession of 2008.

Built 1956 – 57 for Julius F. Stroud, Jr., who worked for the U.S. Postal Service, one of the best employers of African Americans in the era before the Civil Rights movement. He served 39 years, retiring as one of the first black supervisors in the Charlotte office. His wife Sarah Irby Stroud taught at the Rockwell School in the Derita community just northeast of Charlotte.

Built 1958 – 1959 for Emma L. Crawford. She seems to have rented it out during the 1960s and 1970s, then moved in herself about the time she retired from her job as a registered Nurse with the Veterans Administration Hospital in Salisbury, N.C.

This may have been the first house built after World War II in McCrorey Heights. It first appeared in the 1948 city directory occupied by Perry and Gladys Haynes. Mr. Haynes held a more humble job than many of his later neighbors: warehouse clerk at the A & P grocery warehouse on Summit Avenue. The initial dwelling was among the smaller in the neighborhood. It appears to have been built as a small gable-roofed brick cottage, then given a large gable-roofed brick front addition perhaps in the 1970s.